Since late June, I have been gathering input from all manner of blink-182 fandom via a Google Survey. Sources include several huge message boards (including the 182online.com forum of course!), the blink-182 subreddit, and many more communities that have a passion for blink’s music and members, past and present. Thank you to any and all of the 1,872 fans that were kind enough to take some time to fill out the survey. Let’s take a look at the results:

The majority of fans seem to give this album a B grade, trending toward a B+.

Just over half of all blink-182 fans polled find California to be a progression for the band since their last release, “Dogs Eating Dogs.

Cynical was the hands-down uncontested favorite, while the consensus on 2 and 3 were much harder to reach. San Diego pulled ahead with a very late charge, snatching the silver medal with a 33% tally, with Left Alone & She’s Out of Her Mind coming in a virtual tie for bronze.

Fans were hard-fought to choose which songs they DIDN’T like from this album, and the disparity is clear. Los Angeles’s unusual nature for a blink song earned it the #1 ranking for Least Liked, but Teenage Satellites was always floating in the top of the chart since this poll’s inception.

Here’s where the Tom data starts to trickle in, and 1/5th of those polled miss the former frontman. Outside of support for Mark, a quarter of the surveyed felt they couldn’t pick a favorite.

The bulk of results came from long-time fans, which makes sense considering the band has been around for nearly a quarter century. I’ll reshape that question for our next survey.

Nearly half of the results coming from people born in the early-to-mid 1990s.

No love for Buddha? The age of the participants in tandem with this question, as the bulk of those polled loved the untitled/self-titled 2003 album which many consider the band’s masterpiece.

Despite the positive reactions from many critics and fans, most apparently have no interest in seeing John Feldmann return as blink’s producer for their next work.

I was surprised to see the Tom questions net data that inclines toward fans supporting DeLonge.

Among the rumored titles for this record, the majority of you agreed with blink in that they aren’t up to snuff.

No question about it – fans enjoy Bored To Death as the lead single off of California.

The overwhelming majority of those polled stood by She’s Out Of Her Mind as the best alternative lead single.

In the first of two final gag questions, most fans must’ve felt they were only halfway home.

The runaway response here was that 748 of you have fucked my mother, and for that I thank you.

MySanAntonio.com talked a bit with blink-182 tourmates A Day To Remember about what the tour was like so far, and their takeaways on playing with blink:

“…it’s been pretty awesome for us, and once we’re done, Blink comes on and it’s an explosion. I love watching them come out every night because people just freak out. I’m right there with (fans), too. My energy level is on maximum.”

Forbes.com spoke with blink, the band’s management, and prominent members of the famous KROQ to gain their perspective on how blink’s California album got to the number one spot.

One of blink’s managers Lawrence Vavra had a few interesting takes especially:

“The first year they were recording, just the three of them, no producer, I hadn’t heard anything. But after a couple of weeks I went in and heard stuff they’d been working on with John Feldmann,” he says. “The first thing I heard was ‘Built This Pool’ and a song like ‘Built This Pool’ would not have been on this record had the dynamic not changed. Once I heard that a smile came over my face.”

He also provided unique insight on how blink-182 got paired with BMG to release California in lieu of doing an independent release:

“Originally I wanted the guys to put up their own money and we would just do everything ourselves. But the compromise was again we’ll have BMG put up the money and we’ll still put everything ourselves, but at least now the guys aren’t coming out of pocket,” he says. “So we did it and we were geared up, we were gonna do everything ourselves, we have all that stuff in house. But once Vagrant was acquired by BMG they brought in this group that really understood the culture with Blink. So we started working in tandem with them where they would supply the product management. We still would do everything and we’d spend the money how we wanted to, but now we had a couple more soldiers and their radio guy, Nick. So now all of a sudden we had a good radio team and we didn’t have to listen to a major label spend the money they wanted to spend, we’d just spend it ourselves the way we wanted to. And who better than us to know what moves the needle for the band?”

blink-182 spoke with Upset Magazine about their new album California, and Mark and Matt weighed in on the opening track, “Cynical:”

“It does set the mood and the pace of the record; it starts off self-questioning and then Travis’ phenomenal drumming kicks in, then the guitars and it just takes off,” adds Mark. “The intro is me talking about myself and the creative process I go through every day. I start every song with this fear, thinking I’m never going to write another good song, and then we go into the studio and things fall into place. There’s a moment when you’re driving home from the studio with a brand new song playing on your car stereo, and there’s such a feeling of joy, accomplishment, pride and excitement. Then I wake up the next day, thinking I’ll never write another good song.”

“I didn’t know that until just now,” admits Matt. The pair fed off what each other was singing across ‘California’, but they never spelled it out for one another. “For me, ‘Cynical’ is about the moment of panic when the phone rings. It makes me think of when I was going through a divorce and I wouldn’t check my email because I would just be getting legal bills and requests. It was a fucking mess. An uptown mess, in retrospect it wasn’t that big of a deal, but it was that panic of what is this going to be? It really struck a chord with me and the rest of it wrote itself. That happened throughout the whole record and I think we make a really good team, all three of us.”

In this cool MusicRadar.com interview with California’s producer John Feldmann, the energetic lead singer of Goldfinger gives interesting insight to the production of Blink-182’s latest album.

“One of [Blink’s] long-standing members [Tom DeLonge] left the band and there was a bunch of question marks for them as far as what their career looked like. They tried doing stuff on their own and it was coming out a bit like patchwork.

“There wasn’t really a thread sonically throughout the songs they’d written. Had all that stuff come together, I wouldn’t have been considered [to produce California].

“Like Steve Jobs says, you can only see where you’re at in your life by connecting the dots backwards. No-one has a crystal ball to see the future, but everything that’s happened in my life has led to me having the privilege of producing Blink.

“This project came to me because I was ready to do it, because of all the experience I’ve had being in a band and helping other bands get signed and making their records.”

Additionally, the blink-182 tour kicks off tonight with a show in San Diego, CA. Visit blink182.com and scroll down to their tour section for full dates and times.